HardCase's Angel
by Wanderlustlover
Summary: The Common people. Marvel related. Baby Jane's life across time and fate.
1. Default Chapter

"HardCase's Angel"  
  
Time: Three years ago, around 12-1pm  
  
Setting: Outside Salem Center. Shady Suburb.  
  
Reaching up she brushed away the chin length bangs that fell in the way of her vision, trying to get it to stay in the ponytailer atleast two minutes. The afternoon crowd would come in soon, and she'd rather have a clean bar top for five or ten minutes than to never seen the thing shine at all. She was bound by fierce determination to prove there really was a counter top under all the beer rings, food stains, and general puked up and bled on crap that was stuck better than the stuff stuck under the tables.  
  
She worked her hands hard on a wash cloth, not crying out but wincing and whimpering sometimes when she would press too hard on her finger tips, and using a metal spatula when she got to the particularly "clingy" articles of whatever it was stuck. Occasional she took a step back to wipe her hands on   
  
the apron around her shorts, and tuck the strands of not-yet-long-enough hair away for the millionth time in that one minute alone.  
  
"What're you goin' at, girl?"  
  
The voice rolled in her ears, thick, strongly accented and she cast her intense eyes from the counter of the bar to him. Sal. Her boss. The man with an annoyingly strong and getting all too obvious crush on her.  
  
"Cleaning the tops, Sal, before the next pack files in. Drinks ready? Stoves warmed?"  
  
Her glowered at him over the large nose that detracted to what could've been a nearly partially attractive face, and his eyes darkened on her. He hated being talked up, too. The only reason she got away with was she was cute in his eyes, knew how to put up with the customers, and they seemed to like her.  
  
"Why dontcha just focus on ya job, beau'ful. Straighten you'se'f up for the nooner's so they keep comin' back for more."  
  
Sal waddled back through the swinging door to the kitchen and she tried to refrain from swearing outloud again or throwing the spatula through the pick up area for food at him. She wasn't a hugely emotional person, but she hated being told, day in and day out, it was her body that let her keep the job. No, it wasn't that she was friendly, or that she could make any drink you could name and even a few you couldn't and would kill for. It was because of her body.  
  
Looking down at herself as she walked towards the drawer under the register didn't help any.  
  
A pair of normal, casual, white tennis shoes and crew shocks. Her legs like most of her skin was a gorgeously tanned color, thought she wished her leg were in a bit more shape. She wore a pair of tight blue daisy duke jean cut off shorts that hugged her hips and pressed tight against her form under the untidy apron. Above that she had a tie string shirt in crimson that tied one in thin strings behind her neck and once across the center of her back, and had a white play boy bunny on the center of the shirt.  
  
Pulling out the hair band that held her hair in a low bun, she opened the drawer and pulled out a brush. Stretching the hair band she slid it on her wrist and began to brush out her hair. She loved her hair. It was one of her smaller joys in life. And her life did need them. It came the center of her shoulder blades in a rushing tumble of dark brunette shades. Taking little time to care she brushed out the knots and started pulling it up in a high ponytail.  
  
Not that she really cared. She cast a glance to the door as it swung open and she placed the brush down with one hand around the bottom of the ponytail tight, right above the crown of her head. She nodded to the man, as she pulled the pony tailer from her wrist and started twisting it around her hair.  
  
"Afternoon, Roger. How's the wife?"  
  
He grinned at her, strong rugged feature sliding into a barstool as she moved, finishing her hair, to the back and started making him a double scotch already. He was constant in his thing, only once asked for a different thing. He was a big bear of a man, strong, but one of those teddy bear men that were so hard to find. Genuine smile, soft eyes.  
  
"She's good. We're good. Baby's due in about two weeks. Decided she's going to name it Michele- thank you," he interrupted himself as she handed him his drink. She nodded good naturally, and went to getting rid of the apron, and placing her three rings back on her fingers. "She's naming it Michele after her grandmother."  
  
"Sounds good, what you think?"  
  
"I'm a blessed man, that's what I think," Roger said raising the glass to her as if in a toast, and he took half the drink in one shot.  
  
The door opened again, as she had to keep from grinning all but a little. The man who walked in was tall, clean cut type you wouldn't ever expect here. White suite, blue shirt, shined shoes and a lapel of a red rose. Never came in too often to annoy the normals. Uptown money, was what the guys around here called him.  
  
"Heya, Josh. What can we do ya for?"  
  
He gave a charming smile she fought to find annoying, even thought she found his moods to be usually. He slid into the first stool, next to the register, down the row four from where Roger was. Setting another drink in front of Roger she looked up expectantly.  
  
"How bout that date you promised me so long ago, Baby Jane."  
  
"I never promised you nothin'," she said with a sly grin. "What can I get for you?"  
  
"Vodka martini. Dry. Two olives, and a small onion slice in between."  
  
He leaned up to the counter where she'd started making his drink, invading what could easily first be called her personal space, and then her even more personal space. A shiver of impatience ran down her spine, but after so long in this place she'd learn to deal with people who were like that.  
  
"Were you always this cute or do you have to work at?"  
  
Roger glanced up, giving him a look that would have told him he was being watched and warned and to her that if she needed the help. Big bear. She adored Roger. He was in some way the father she never did have. Sliding the olive and a thin slice of onion and the other olive she slipped him his drink with a laugh.  
  
"I'm way too much for you to handle, doll," she said grinning teasingly, stepping back, pulling out more cups and a order pad. People began to come in suddenly almost like a line getting tables, and whistling for service, so it was now her cue to as Sal so nicely put it before 'Get her rear in gear, and serve'.  
  
"You wouldn't know what to do with the likes of me." With that she walked off knowing it wouldn't be the end, if only the beginning of the cutesy conversation lines she'd get tonight.  
  
Baby Jane wasn't much of a drinker herself, she never much liked the taste of many alcohol's. But the people who did like it tipped good, and the wages working here at HardCase's were terrific for someone who'd clean up puke, blood, teeth, say they never saw a thing to the cops, or a wife, and would flirt with them even after watching it all happen. 


	2. Chapter 2

"HardCase's Angel" Part II  
  
Time: Two and half Years ago, late night/early morning, 1-2 am  
  
Setting: HardCases. Outside Salem Center. Shady Suburb.  
  
Blowing an annoyed breath up at her bangs that hung to her chin she watched her normal early morning customers on this incredibly slow night drink their drinks, play pool on the last left table from the fight earlier, and generally goof off with each other. She might have smiled if it had been any normal night. Might have found a reason to hang around a table and laugh with the gents. But tonight was a different sort of night, and she was out of sorts.  
  
Her mother was in for surgery tonight, and whether they got along at all in the last seven years didn't seem so important next to her mother having a fatal medical problem now. She wished she could have killed the guy who did   
  
it. She had no love loss in the last years, but I didn't mean she didn't love her. You only got one mother.  
  
With a glance of almost empty sympathetic pain she looked to see whom the next person coming in was when the door opened. Another regular. One who hadn't been in a month or so again. Liked to drink, brawl, flirt sometimes,   
  
and most of all be left alone and lost in thought. He liked to do all of it a lot. In some ways he was a favorite customer of Sal's. The man had a tolerance for liquor she'd seen few men twice his size could. Good customer,   
  
always paid his tab, liked the place, always came back.  
  
He was the short, burly type. Usually wore blue jeans, leather jacket when he came in, cowboy boots, and sometimes a beat up setson hat, too. Rugged features, dark black hair with silver tints sometimes. She loved his eyes   
  
though if anything. You could never really tell exactly what it was he was thinking. Sometime when he was drinking a beer she thought he looked happy, and sometimes when he was fighting he looked sad almost. Came with buddies   
  
sometimes, but only very rarely.  
  
Baby Jane just smiled at him, when he nodded the front of the beat up old hat to her with a type of respect she rarely got, sitting down in front of her. A few eyes raised from corners and people whispered. His name was Logan, but his rumors followed him more loudly than his own speech to hear him talk did. Rumor was longest hanging now that he was a mutant. Personally she didn't care. The man was a terrific customer, and as long as he kept up his tab he would be treated like one.  
  
"Back so soon?" She said with a playful grin, trying to press off her dour thoughts best she could, as she pulled out a cup and set it in front of him, closer to her on the counter.  
  
"Something strong this time." He said, this glint of light touching off the blue in his eyes, as he took of the hat and laid it on the counter next to him. "Long time, darlin'. Thought you wanted out o' the business?"  
  
"Baby Jane, leave her favorite customers? Perish the thought!" Shrugging she turned going on an idea of something she could add to it that might make him happy, and spoke over her shoulder so he'd hear her over the noises she made opening, and mixing things. "It pays the bills. I gotta have something that does that."  
  
Turning back she handed him the drink and smiled, her head tilted slightly. "Actually am looking at a part time, during the day, on the other side of town, in West Chester. Some place called Harry's Hideaway."  
  
Since he didn't move to say anything and continued watching and listening, she did what any woman and bar tenders would do while they looked that way. She kept talking. "It's a nice stand up place. Almost makes me think I'll be   
  
bored there after all the excitement I see here night after night."  
  
He simply nodded as if he understood and went at his drink. Something about him seemed different she couldn't put a finger on it. He seemed down cast? Sad? Unhappy? It was almost disturbing. Looking at him you could see easily if you knew how to look that he was a fighter, but that there was also something tender and lost in him.  
  
"What d'you do, Logan?" Baby Jane asked quietly after waiting on a few other customer in booths, watching him down five drinks and ask for another still stronger drink. Handing him another drink, she picked up a rag and started   
  
wiping off the counter by the register waiting for him to answer.  
  
"Save the world."  
  
She furrowed her brows looking up from the counter top. It wasn't that she expected he would answer eventually or not. He was a quiet man. And as a rule a lot of normal customers until heart broke kept their problems to themselves unless they were completely plastered and didn't have the smallest recollection of what they were saying.  
  
"From what?" she asked good naturedly, with a curiosity biting at the chomp in her next to a laugh. Yes, he was drunk. SuperLogan! A small image of him in a superman costume, or one of the Avengers costume's popped into her head.  
  
"It's self."  
  
"It's self?" she beckoned the question back at him. What'd the world need saving from? The government? Aliens? Mutants? No, she got it. He was FBI. Someone like Mulder. THE TRUTH IS OUT THERE!!!! She muffled a tiny laugh into a cough.  
  
For one second alone she wondered if he heard it because he looked up at her suddenly with those blue eyes and her mood immediately dropped. God, the expression was like someone who just lost their best friend, or had watched   
  
the love of their life die. That almost child like you ran over my puppy and the world is going to end now expression inside his eyes.  
  
"What's yer real name?" he asked and she realized again, she had no idea behind those eyes what was going on in his head. She looked towards the pick window barely when Sal whistled to say she had bout ten till closing.  
  
"What? You don't like Baby Jane?" She asked with a chuckle as she stopped wiping the counter all together and tossed the rag at the end of the table behind counter with everything else on it. Looking back before she walked to   
  
the counter and sets her hands on the edge looking at him, she wondered what a man like this went through to carry the expressions he did. War? Heart ache? Loss?  
  
"My mother christened me Jennifer," her voice replied softly. She knew what came next. It always did. The whole 'how did Jennifer get to Jane' line of questioning. It was actually pretty simple, and sometime annoying to   
  
explain, so she shot back a pretty regular question, too. "You got any kids, Logan?"  
  
He stopped as he scooted the drink over across the counter, and picking up his hat. He glanced to the door and her eyes followed his. They widened a second later. The door hadn't made a noise like it always did opening, but there was a man standing in the doorway. One of the guys he'd brought before. Tall, dark, long trench coat, Cajun accent. Remy something if she remember right and she usually did.  
  
He looked back at her at about the same second she glanced back to him. His expression changed, and he looked some how suddenly-- annoyed? Angry? Tired? He pulled a wallet out and handed her the money. "Too flamin' many."  
  
What was going on? Then another question stung her suddenly. Where did he go when he left here? Home? To a family? He said he did have kids, but he didn't say it at all the way a parent would. Home to an empty house?  
  
"Jenn'fer," He started not letting her say anything yet. The name was clenched in his accent, and Baby Jane tried not to wince or look too surprised. No one called her that anymore except her mother, and the thought only made the pain in her stomach hurt more and think about her mother again. "Find the place y'ur happiest and don't leave it fer nothin'."  
  
And with that he walked out, leaving her there, again, one hand on the top of the glass she needed to wash, watching the door swing, the other hand holding the cash. Left searching for some huge deeper message she couldn't figure out right then, but knew was there in his words. 


	3. Chapter 3

"HardCase's Angel" Part III  
  
Time: Two Years ago, around four pm  
  
Setting: Harry's Hide-Away Outside Salem Center  
  
With a reluctant sigh, her eye's searched out a window as she twisted the rag between her hands, slipped it in her white apron pocket and started carrying the dishes to behind the counter, where the sinks were. She nodded to Molly as she walked buy, the blue uniform dress swaying ever so slightly on the pert young blonde, and gave her the 'long day but we're hanging in there' smile they'd seemed to manage to understand between each other. Especially, since any other language didn't work well, even if they both spoke english.  
  
Okay. Five-second thought break. It wasn't too bad a place. Dress cleaner, more respectable, mind your manners, make nice with the customers, say please and thank you, let them giggle and joke and be normal. It's not like the place's you've been. Its better than the place you been. It's clean, respectable, over the counter, full of smiles.   
  
When was the last time you saw a fight in here? Have you ever seen anyone so much as yell, or even disagree loudly since the day you started working here? When has the boss so much as given you the up and down look? Or the last time he decided to tell you were just a chunk of meat to bring in the customers? Has a customer so much as asked you for more than date here? And the last time you cleaned up blood and teeth here?  
  
Never. Of course not. None of that happens her.  
  
Welcome to Harry's Hideaway. The place were the people who invented the images of families with the white picket fence pop up daily, or the richie-rich people live, and try not to make you sickened. Or is it envious? It's the place where oldies play on an all too modern juke box, and the cook and waitress, Harry and Molly, knows you by your first name said with a smile.  
  
Turning the faucet off, and placing the hot, dripping dishes in the side rack she pulled up her right arm, bent at about a forty-three degree angel inward, to look at her watch. Four-thirty. Damn. Looking up her eyes raked the scene. One old couple drinking cherry flavored root beer floats, and another group of four teenagers in the opposite corner. In laymen's terms, the joint cased, was very dead, and didn't look to be changing anytime soon.   
  
So why aren't you happy?  
  
Cause you're Baby Jane and your best friend told you last night you're going to run yourself into the ground, and you're doing it quite willingly. Harry's from eight am till six pm, then HardCase's from six thirty pm till three am, and somewhere in there atleast one wink. No boy friend. No free time. All your money's going into paying your mothers medical bills.   
  
The real reason?  
  
Because Harry's is a heaven, and HardCase's is hell, and somehow, even though you work it wonderfully, and both sets of customers love you, you know you don't fit into to either. And you, you take the hand out, anything to get the day over with. Maybe you're living for that three minutes of sleep you swore to your best friend was a lot longer than that.   
  
'Find the place y'ur happiest and don't leave it fer nothin'.'  
  
The words that haven't left you in six months. You might as well tattoo them on your forehead since they've wrecked your world. Seven months ago, you were living with living the lie, even happily living it. Now you can't forget the way he looked you like it was the saving grace of Christ's last words. You can't forget the heart in his voice, and he never was that vulnerable to anyone. Not fighting, not being quiet, not even when laughing.  
  
You're not happy, and you know you're not happy. You're just living by the day, paying bills in your short spare time while you keep you bathroom closet behind the mirror and purse filled with not just Midol, for those of so un-fun day, but more importantly, caffeine pills, because you don't have time to sleep. Two normal jobs don't pay off medical bills, even on double the normal paycheck.   
  
And men? Men. Feh. Working in a bar you've seen enough of them. Not to say you're for the all girl team or some such as that. But you don't have a problem with it either. Woman are sweet, too. Not like it's forbidden fruit or anything. You're just off the swing. You don't want to swing either way. Because having time to waste on a significant other, of any sex, takes up time you could be using to pay off those bills.   
  
And what do you need of a life? For that matter when was the last time you had time for a life?   
  
The bell on the door jangled and the security box beeper, both annoying, caused her to look up from where she now stood at the register. A statuesque red head, and a thin black woman who had the whitest hair she'd seen on anyone. Dress said upscale, but uncaring enough to be relaxed. Features and attitudes said carefree and happy. The placement in the society scale was iffy.   
  
They were walking straight up to the counter which meant no need for seating. Might have been lovers from the way they both laughed and smiled at something obviously now over having been said, and from the way their hands had been together and then dropped while walking in. The red head suddenly smiled faintly and then oddly the black woman did, as if some secret joke had passed between them without words.  
  
Gaea, BJ, get your head out of the black hole. You gotta keep on top of it. You don't have the time or the money to fall on your ass now. Give it atleast another six-twelve months  
  
"Welcome to Harry Hide-Away how can-," Baby Jane started pasting a smile on her lips that was unreal.  
  
"Mama-mia! Girls!" The Italian voice called from behind her, filled with tender affection, like one might have for one's own child, and she tired hard not to shudder. Did he know everyone? 


End file.
